Trader's Article of the Month
by Discount Commodity Broker ...

Mind Over Profits...

A good time to find a good discount-commodity-broker is today
... I believe
it is fair to say that the great majority of those who
enter into trading the markets do so to make money.
Regardless of their overall goals, whether it be to
make a living from trading or to simply increase their
wealth, a trader enters
this trading business for one main reason; to succeed
at it and making-money in the process!

As traders, we have the complete freedom
to buy or sell in the markets. This is an incredible
amount of power that each and every trader has at his
disposal. What we do not have control over, however,
are the market forces themselves. In other words, the
market will do what the market will do, and that part
of this business we do not control individually.

To be successful and profitable trading
the markets requires that we do well with what we can
control. What we can control are our actions. To control
our actions well requires that we have strong positive
mental habits. A good trading method is also important,
but even the best approach will fail if used by a mind
that is negative, lacks confidence, discipline and focus.

Our mind is more powerful than anyone
can imagine. Over our lifetime, we have developed a
particular attitude as a result of feedback from our
parents, school, environment and friends. During this
course, we have come to see the world and ourselves
in a way that no other person can possibly know. Every
experience plays some part in our own self-image, how
we look at ourselves. If we have a healthy self-image,
this manifests itself in various positive levels of
achievement. However, if our self-image is negative,
we would find ourselves unable to grab the brass ring
of success.

For those of you who actively trade (or desire to learn how to trade) the
financial and futures markets, there are a lot of other things outside the
markets you should be following. But, I guess my bigger message is for those
of you that aren’t in the futures markets, whether you trade them or
not, the futures markets have a significant impact on what happens in the
other financial markets, including forex, currencies, options and stocks.
That’s why you should soak up every piece of good trading knowledge
like a sponge in a quest to clearly see the bigger picture.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most
folks are about as happy as they make up their minds
to be". This is profoundly true. There are many
accounts about individuals who have met with disaster
in their lives, whether it be an accident or illness
of some kind, and yet do not let the shortcomings handed
to them affect their happiness and ability to enjoy
life. On the other hand, there are many more accounts
of individuals who have allowed even the most minor
setback to fill their life with depression, anger and
self-pity.

Trading successfully requires that the
trader have a POSITIVE ATTITUDE. Even if all our prior
experiences were negative, our attitudes are continuously
in a state of attention for instruction on how it should
be from one minute to the next. We have an inner voice
that continuously feeds our conscious and subconscious
mind, and it is what we feed our mind from within that
molds our attitude.

It is easy to develop a bad attitude about
a number of things around us. We can be negative about
other people, our job, our car, our bills, and our selves.
And of course, we can be negative about our trading
performance and point to everything other than our attitude
as the problem and reason for failure.

If you are frustrated about your trading,
consider that the problem is likely due to your attitude.

To Succeed, Adjust Your Attitude --

Some believe that there is nothing that
they can do about their attitude. It is their parents
fault, or due to something or someone. This belief alone
is spawned from a negative attitude. The question is
whether you want a better attitude, regardless of why
you think your attitude is as it is right now. If you
WANT to succeed, you must WANT to improve your attitude.
And you can if YOU WANT TO!

The mind can be trained, no matter how
old you are or how long you have been doing something
one way. When you walk, move your legs, hands and fingers,
you do so without much thought on a conscious level.
The reason for this is that you have developed a HABIT
of doing certain things that it no longer requires conscious
thought to perform. After something is done for some
period of time on a conscious level, soon it becomes
part of the subconscious and you have successfully trained
your mind with new tools. Click-here for Trading Tip-of-the-Day.

Take for example the Typist. When you
first started to learn how to type, it required a great
amount of conscious effort on your part. You had to
CONCENTRATE on where the keys were located, which finger
to use to press the proper key, and what you were required
to type. Hours of practice was required over a period
of time, and done regularly without letup, until you
came to a point when typing was no longer a conscious
effort but a subconscious one. As I am typing this article
right now, I am not giving any thought as to where the
letters are on my keyboard or which one of my fingers
are pressing the letter at the time. Since I have been
typing now for 27 years, it is now a habit and part
of my subconscious.

Another example is learning to play the
Piano. A conscious effort was required for a period
of time, with a great amount of practice. However, soon
that practice becomes a habit and then a part of your
subconscious mind. You can enjoy the music of you fingers
rather than concentrating on where a particular key
is located.

Our attitude can be made to see things
more positively if we make a CONCERTED EFFORT to talk
to it about POSITIVE things rather than negative. If
we make a constant effort to make sure that our inner
voice is only speaking positive things about our present
circumstances, whether it be the people around us or
our jobs, whatever, in time it becomes easier to do
and then becomes a HABIT. Once something becomes a habit,
it is effortless and a part of us. It becomes a part
of our subconscious mind.

As with any type of training, we need
to have a plan as to what we can feed our mind. Here
are some suggestions to start training your mind to
have the RIGHT ATTITUDE TO SUCCEED.

1. Be enthusiastic about learning. If
you want to succeed in trading, you must learn to enjoy
the process involved. Think of each topic to learn in
a positive light, as something that is going to help
you reach your dreams. Which leads to the next suggestion;

2. Envision your success. See yourself
where you want to be. Do you want to trade full-time
at home, or trade for a large firm? See yourself already
doing this in your mind. Experience the sounds and the
feelings from inside as if you are already there. Do
this regularly, several times a day. Although the conscious
mind is aware of what you are doing, the subconscious
mind is only aware of the experiences and information
it it being fed. It cannot tell the difference. Yet,
it is the part of the brain we want to train as habits
are held there. So feed it what you want to become a
reality. Feed it the reality that you are a successful
trader doing what you want to do. To help you believe
the power of the mind is as strong as I am suggesting,
try this experiment. Close your eyes, and picture yourself
cutting a lemon in half. Imagine the spray coming off
the lemon and hitting your face and hands. Can you feel
it? How about when it gets in your eye? Imagine that.
Feel the sting? Now, imagine taking a bite of that lemon.
Notice how your mouth starts to pucker as it senses
the sour taste of that lemon? Yet, you are only eating
it in your mind. It will do as you tell it to! So feed
it only positive thoughts and watch how your mind will
respond in a short period of time.

3. Keep focused on your goals. It helps
to have a goal in the first place if you wish to be
a success. A person without goals is a person with direction.
Decide what is important to you and WRITE IT DOWN. Then,
several times each day pick up your goals and read them.
Do this religiously. By doing this you train your mind
to find ways for you to achieve those goals.

4. Do not allow the negativity from others
affect you. If you are around negativity and find it
is affecting you, stay far away from it. I have long
ago trained my mind to believe that negative people
are here to test the positive people, and that those
truly positive will become more so in realizing this.
But be careful. Even a solid rock cliff will slowly
erode when constantly hit by ocean waves. Stay clear
of constant negativity if at all possible. Surround
yourself with positive people and positive things to
read and do.

As you apply these suggestions, REMAIN
OPTIMISTIC. Do NOT become discouraged or impatient.
To become a good typist or pianist requires time, and
this goes for anything worthwhile. If you TRULY and
HONESTLY desire to achieve success in trading, then
look at each day as another wonderful opportunity to
learn at least one new thing about the markets, the
techniques available, the process. Be POSITIVE about
all the results from your learning,whether it appears
what you have learned is useful or not.

Regardless of the best trading rules and
methods, if we do not have the right positive attitude,
we will fail to execute the plan properly. We will find
ways to fail, because we have allowed our mind to dwell
on failure and that is all it understands. So start
now if you have not already and develop that POSITIVE
ATTITUDE. And I will see you in the winners circle.

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The questions the money management rules
need to address are:

1. How much trading capital is needed
to finance one contract in a particular market? For
example, a trader may decide he needs $40,000 (margin)
to trade one Treasury Bond contract and $30,000 to trade
one Japanese Yen contract (or international commodity
markets).

2. What percentage of capital is to be
risked on each trade. For example, is it 2% or 5%?

3. Are opportunities across competing
instruments treated as equal?

4. Are trading opportunities within the
some instrument treated as equal?

5. Are successive opportunities in the
same instrument treated as equal?

Once a trading plan and a set of good
money management rules have been developed, we need
to take the plan into the market. It is at this point
that we will not only discover more about our plan,
but more importantly we will discover more about our
own psychology. For instance, we may discover we are
unable to execute the trading plan in the market, or we are
unable to execute it flawlessly.

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Before we can progress, we must remedy
any problems which have arisen so far. To overcome these
problems, we may need to adjust our trading plan and/or
look closely at our own psychological makeup. For instance,
the trading plan may need to be made simpler or more
robust so that we find it easier to execute it. Another
example, could be that we find our psychology is such
that we are more suited to a type of trading other than
the trading style of our plan, for example long-term
trading rather than day trading.

Once we are able to execute the trading
plan flawlessly, then we can go to the next step - that
is, are we ready to accept the rewards from the perfect
execution of our plan? We may suddenly find ourselves
unable to accept a steady stream of money from the market.
This problem normally manifests itself with having a
series of wins only to give back profits in one or two
unplanned trades finishing from where we started. Again,
we will have to go back and look at our own psychology
and try to remove any blocks that are stopping us from
reaping the rewards of our efforts.

At the completion of this task, we will
be back at the beginning of the loop - the trading plan.
After completing the loop we will not only have new
ideas to test and incorporate, but also be able to adjust
the plan to better suit our psychological development
as a commodities futures trader.

Once again quoting T. S. Elliot, "through
the unknown, remembered gate when the last of earth
left to discover is that which is the beginning."
Article by by Rick Ratchford

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